Katie Aubrecht

SCIENCE OR SPIRIT WRITING: THE PORTENT OF PELVIC PAIN

Cool jelly separates skin and sound, freezing time. The instrument that produces the ultrasound moves across the skin like a planchette, its semi-circles leaving traces of clear fluid across an exposed abdomen. Half moons spiral downwards, lower, lower, lower, pausing long enough for the seer to get a good look, then re-ascending to the navel for another round. During the procedure, reverberations silently change shape from pulsations to revelations, releasing divinations from within. Possessed by science and fixated on the task at hand, a gloved hand uses quick strokes to paint a picture for more highly trained expert eyes.

The picture is too partial, we need to go deeper.

The clairvoyant sits high on a stool. Careful never to look down, she fixes her gaze on a screen for protection. Eyes, half closed, periodically stray from the wall to the screen. But hers are nervous glances that move too quickly, at too awkward an angle to see anything substantial. Lying on the bed impatiently, hands clenched and heart racing, she can see only doubles. Vision split, she listens for clues.

A whimper. Does it hurt? A barely audible 'no' rises from beneath the shame at legs raised under a tattered paper skirt. After it is done, a search for answers which yields neither "Yes" nor "No"… a pause. The planchette does not move for her, it gives her no direction, not yet. She pulls up one leg, and then the other, and returns home to wait for the call.

* * *

MADNESS TRANSPIRED

To have one's life transcribed
To be charted, noted, hung on the wall and open to pen scratch,
Made a copy ready for copying,
More or less
A form, a fit, a fact
Doubled, replicated, repeated
Made silent or verbose

To be rendered transparent
To be held up to the light and feel your ink drip down the sides,
A mess
Made public, off the page
Tributaries of mascara paying homage to a theory
A hope, conjecture; complementary foes
An adaptation of the way things should have been

To have one's life transcribed,
To be dictated and predetermined, the self-fulfilling prophecy,
Unfulfilled
Made a record of reproduction
In need of proofing, and a new pair of eyes
Is to face the story of an ought to be
That sanctions a soul, and gapes a body for staring

Katie Aubrecht is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and Research Coordinator at the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging. Katie uses a critical feminist disability studies perspective to examine how health services literature shapes understanding of embodied experience.